We have mineral rights in certain NMAs that the Operators tell us we’re not in the pay deck for their wells. How do we go about understanding why we should or should not be participating in production in Sections we own mineral rights?
Look up the wells on the GIS maps of your state for the plat maps of wells. You may have a surface location in your acreage, but the spacing unit and perforations may be in the tract next door.
The pay deck comes out of the Division Title report run for each well. Your ancestors may have sold the mineral rights that you thought you had. Occasionally, those Title reports can be wrong, so if you have deeds, probates, etc., then that can straighten out the information and get the deck corrected. What state are you dealing with?
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Thanks, most of our minerals are in Oklahoma. Where can you find the Division Title reports? Whom do you contact to straighten out the information? For one particular NMA I sent the deed to the Operator and the response I got back is, “you’re not in the pay deck” but no direction on how to correct the problem.
Division Title reports are privately held by the operator since they paid to have them done. They are not public.
Be aware that you need to understand the path of the well to determine if your acreage is included. The surface location of a well may not be in the section(s) where the perforations are-critical for a directional or horizontal well. You can contact the DO department, give them your acreage and ask why you are not included in the pay deck for a particular well.
Your acreage that you thought you had may have been sold, or someone may have a deed, but didn’t have the right to convey what they conveyed, etc.
Also, certain states have dormant mineral laws which generally mean that if the minerals are not producing after a certain number of years, they can be claimed by the surface owner unless the mineral owner continues to file a claim on them in the required time frame.
If you want to share an example of one of the NMAs the forum members can usually find a map of the wells or show you how to look it up for your state if you want to do it yourself.
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Thanks, I’ve referenced a well deeper in this tread but first wanted to ask for some clarity on ownership as it relates to surface location vs perforations vs product vs product location.
- If the surface location is in my NMA but the product is in a different NMA, then most likely we wouldn’t have any mineral rights in the well?
- When you reference perforation is that the actual wellbore?
- Is it the path of the well that’s important to a mineral owner or the location of the Bottom Hole?
- If the surface location is in your NMA but the bottom hole of a well is just outside your section’s boundary line does that preclude you from the royalties of the well? when does Pooling come into the picture???
We own mineral rights in 34-12N-6W Canadian County OK, the deed says (all). BCE-Mach is the operator and told us we’re not in the deck for wells Airport 8 & 10, and Rosannadanna 2MHX & 3MHX. Roseannadanna has their bottom hole in the neighboring section.
The Airport 10 well is now inactive as of 2021-12-01. Airport 8 and the other two are active. So the wells are in 34 and a large percentage of the path of the horizontals is in 34.
The surface location is in 34. The final order for case 202101512 states that the allocation dof perforations for Roseannadanna 2MX is 61.31% in sec 34 and 38.69% in sec 27. The formula for royalties is net acres/actual spacing acres x royalty x % perforations of the well in your section.
The next step is for you to search the names on the deed on www.okcountyrecords.com. It is free to search. A small fee to print. I use the advanced search. It is possible that the person on the deed sold the minerals or it has passed to a different generation. It would be highly unlikely to own a whole section at this generation. There are 80 folks on the correspondence list for the horizontal wells that own acreage in the two sections. See if you can find the name and we can go to step two.
Awesome Thanks. I hired a landman and forwarded to him my research and your reply to my questions. His initial comments were, Mach is known to be problematic especially when some degree of negligence on their part is evident. More to follow…